a declaration of war, and that the republic
did not pay its enemies. Gutenberg, persisting in his voluntary exile
and in his disdain, lived on the secret remittances of his mother.

But at Strasburg he already enjoyed so great a popularity for his
disposition and his acquirements, that one day, when the chief
magistrate of Mainz was passing the territory of Strasburg, he was
arrested by the friends of Gutenberg, shut up in a castle, and did not
recover his liberty until the city of Mainz had signed a treaty which
restored the exile his patrimony. Thus this youth, the great tribune of
the human mind, whose invention was destined to destroy forever the
prejudices of race, and to restore, in after-times, liberty and civil
equality to all the plebeians of the world, began his life, as yet
unrecognized, at the head of the patrician party of his country, in
these struggles between the privileged castes and the people. Fortune
seemed to delight in the contrast. But Gutenberg's wisdom, increasing
with his age, was afterward destined to reunite the people and nobility,
who looked on each other as enemies.

The restoration of his goods allowed young Gutenberg to satisfy his
literary, religious, and artistic tastes, by travelling from town to
town to study monuments, and visit men of all conditions celebrated for
their science, their art, or even their trade. The artisans of Germany
then held nearly the same rank as the artists. It was at the time when
the trades, scarcely known, were confused with the arts, and when the
most humble professions produced their earliest masterpieces, which, on
account of their novelty, were looked upon as prodigies. Gutenberg
travelled alone, on foot, carrying a knapsack containing books and
clothes, like a mere student visiting the schools, or a journeyman
looking for a master. He thus went through the Rhenish provinces, Italy,
Switzerland, Germany, and lastly, Holland, not without an object, like a
man who lets his imagination wander at the caprice of his footsteps, but
carrying everywhere with him a fixed idea, an unchanging will led by a
presentiment. This guiding star was the thought of spreading the word of
God and the Bible among a vaster number of souls.

Thus it was religion which, in this young wandering apostle, was seeking
the soil wherein to sow a single seed, of which the fruit hereafter was
to be a thousand various grains. It is the glory of printing that it was
given to the world b